Cloud Solution Provider – checklist for choosing the right partner

23rd April 2018

If you’re ready to start adopting one or more cloud services, you need to feel confident that the vendor you’ve entrusted with your business-critical applications and data will keep them safe and provide proper support. That isn’t necessarily easy, though. According to a recent report by IDG2, one in three IT leaders found that the provider ultimately failed to meet expectations for support.

In this post, we will guide you through the factors that should drive your decision-making and explore some of the difficulties you might experience along the way.

Definitely, it is important to have data on the cloud which gives immense scalability and simplicity and manageability of business. And to do this you will need a very strong consultant who can be a part of your business. Unfortunately, choosing an optimal partner for that service has become a tough decision to make.

The cloud provider may have all the technological prowess that ticks all your boxes but may fall short on their business health and profile. To ensure future operations run smoothly, an increased focus should be put on the public reputation of the company, their staff adequacy, and their financial standing.

The provider should have a track record of stability and be in a healthy financial position with sufficient capital to operate successfully over the long term.

The provider should have a formal management structure, established risk management policies and a formal process for assessing third-party service providers and vendors. Check the provider’s reputation and see who its partners are. Find out its level of cloud experience. Read reviews and talk to customers whose situation is similar to yours. Business knowledge and technical know-how. The provider should understand your business and what you are looking to do and be able to match it up with their technical expertise. The provider should be able to validate compliance with all of your requirements through a third-party audit.

Make sure the provider has documented and formal processes for requesting, logging, approving, testing and accepting changes. Even if you don’t plan to use a hybrid cloud initially, you should make sure the provider can support this model. It has advantages that you may wish to exploit at a later time.

They should have plans and processes in place documenting how they plan to communicate with customers during times of disruption including timeliness, prioritization and severity level assessment of issues.

The right partner can help you take advantage of economies of scale, deliver a robust, dispersed platform that’s reliable and innovative, and offer options so you can pick the package that works for your specific business needs. Above all, safeguard your flexibility going forward so you can adopt emerging technologies, innovate, and differentiate your business.

Future is business on cloud and those who have taken decision timely enjoying advancement and encashment of their decision. But when the entire business is on the cloud then it comes with threat on data security. Migrating data to the cloud is not only enough but managing and making it secure is very important. Right cloud partner can help and take your all the burden. You first have to have enough time understand your business and need of cloud. Many times it has been seen that organization do not provide their time in an investigation which harms their business only in future.

The partner you choose will manage one of your greatest assets- your data. Take the time to investigate a prospective cloud consultant thoroughly. Though the selection of a vendor is tedious, I hope this post may help.